June 23, 2020 Board of Education Meeting (via Zoom)

001man are you ready okay welcome to the public meeting of the Princeton Board of Education the board is an elected group of ten citizens who set policy and make decisions on educational financial and personnel matters for the public polls on behalf of all residents always pleased when members of the community attend our meetings the board in the school district operate under ownership laws and under regulations of the New Jersey State Board of Education each meeting includes an opportunity for those attending to comment on items on the publish agenda or other matters interest to them the board reserves the right to limit the type of public participation all limits discussion of individual personnel and confidential matters we desired that our meetings for about useful opportunities for communication between the board in the community so thank you

002for attending as required on the open public meeting act n JSA 10 for 6 at sequential adequate notice was given for calling this meeting it was authorized by the Board of Education and forwarded to the Missal clerk Princeton packet and The Times on january 9th 2020 it was also distributed to the schools and others on the standard distribution list the board reserves the right to enter into executive session during all meetings of the board of education board policy 22:30 recording devices requires that we inform those attending this virtual zoom meeting that the proceedings are being recorded this meeting is not being live-streamed the representative of the sending district is authorized to vote on such matters that affect sending district students or affect the governance of the Prince of public schools as more specifically designated in

003NJ sa-18 838 8.1 in the event that this statute is amended the law shall take precedence over this bylaw sending district boats pertaining to berths now actions refer to high schools central administrative and district-wide staff only votes otherwise are considered abstentions I'll take a roll call Beth parent yes yes damned art here Jess Deutsch that's he bag wheel yes yeah Ryan McDonald president shall talk ponder it Peter cats Daphna Kendall yeah Susan Cantor yeah we have a quorum thank you the first matter of business and is item D adoption of minutes for June ninth twenty twenty can I have a motion someone please raise your hand anyone Betsy second Debbie thank you is there any discussion if not that's parent yes waffle yes and art yes just which that's your bag will yes Brian McDonald

004yes Michele talk ponder Taft and Kendall yes Susan Cantor yes motion passes thank you next item is item e harassment intimidation and bullying and that is a cent item and then we have the biannual harassment intimidation and bullying report which is a discussion Steve correct Matt are you able to pull up the a slide that shows our statistics for or perhaps put in termination bullying it's on me it's on the agenda yeah I know that's on the other computer hold on so for members of the public and the board we are required twice a year to report publicly on what's called a student Safety Data Report so we we report in January for the first half of the year and then we report in June for the full year and Matt is going to be

005pulling up a slide showing you're shaking your head Matt thanks do you have your try and find that on my screen or I'm pulling it up okay so Matt's gonna be pulling up our numbers for 2019-20 the annual and and you'll see a comparison with last year and the year before and the first thing I want to say as we look at these numbers is that every single one of these numbers is as a student as a child and we know them these are students who we are delighted to have in our schools who were supporting in and variety of ways and and we have a philosophy that kids sometimes make mistakes and when they do we look for ways to educate them and to help them heal the harm that they may have caused

006and be restored to the community and I think that it has been our focus on restorative justice that has led to a significant decrease in our numbers for the past few years and overall this year so if you look at the 2019-20 column and you go down to the second bottom row you'll see that our student offenders or those students who've been suspended we have sixteen this year out of an entire district of more than thirty nine hundred students last year we had forty-five the forty five was still a very low number just over 1% the state average based on the Rutgers Center for law is around 4% for a district as a whole it's around 7 or 8 percent at the high school level so you can see that even in prior years with

00745 suspensions we were just over 1% of our students this year we at 16 we are at 1/3 of 1% so the numbers are are very low and we are we're grateful for that and the work of our of our staff to support our kids it's interesting I initially theorized that perhaps some of the decline in numbers was a result of remote learning but when we look back at at period 1 you'll see that the numbers were consistent for when our kids were in school so period 1 2 years ago we had about 20 20 25 students who were suspended and period 1 for 2019-20 we just had 8 students and we were consistent with that in the second semester with with 8 students so I think that you know our focus on conflict resolution

008on character development for our students and on a philosophy of restorative practice where we create a strong sense of community and restorative justice where we provide opportunities other than suspension for our students to be restored to that community is working well for us the times we do suspend students are for more objective kinds of behaviors such as fighting or use of drugs so that's the the report for this year it's a very positive report and I'm happy to take any questions the board might have and if none we can move on to the next item so I just like to add just looking over the suspension report with the confidential information we have their suit there still seems to be a large percentage of children of color and children with special needs needs being disciplined

009and you know that concerns me and I wonder what your recommendation would be going forward I think we're looking at that data they've a that's an important thing for us to have I think we had of the 16 I think 7 students were white and 9 were students of color if I recall correctly it's the other way 7 & 9 that's what I said 7 were white and 9 were seven we're children of color Oh 7 we're children of color and 9 well that's actually fairly consistent with our it's fairly consistent with our percentages we're about 53 percent white right but we're four percent black and I understand but you're looking at very very small numbers so one student represents 7% but I do I mean I'm not I'm not saying that we do not

010we should be looking at that particularly in light of everything that's going on in our country we are looking at those statistics very carefully and I think the the focus on restorative practice and restorative justice is helping us in that regard and we will continue to look at this kind of data because we we should be and I know it's the data that the board gets every month and so I appreciate you bringing making sure that we're focusing focused on that okay thank you um I I too share deafness concern um first of all what I should say is that these numbers are a lot better than they were when I came on the board and I want to congratulate everybody in the school district who's been working on on growing those kinds of qualities

011to to help our students manage manage differences I just wanted to be sustainable you know I you know I think they were this country's going through a movement right now because we've made many attempts and then once the pure growth goes down we go back to the way we were do before and so I'm really interested in ensuring that we figure out a way institutionalize this these practices so that we don't forget them and then they don't start to go away and we end up back where we were before so thank you for that having said that I I'm impressed with our progress and and congratulating everybody who's worked to make this make this a better a better place for for all our kids I agree and I I think that the way that we

012institutionalize this kind of movement is to really continue to look at our policies and look at them from the perspective of anti racism and I hope that we continue to do that as we move forward because I think that that's that's where we want to be as a board and and I think that our policies are the way that we we make this sustainable so I just wanted to add that a lot of the suspensions or a lot of the discipline I guess there's a suspension for kids of color has to do with substance abuse and again I brought this up before but it's not only it just goes back to what makes these kids more susceptible to suspension it's I don't I don't think it's that white kids aren't doing drugs or or other

013substances and so that you know I don't know how we address that in policy but I think that comes back to you know unconscious biases and and just you know some kind of bias that just as is picking out certain kids okay we do have testing that obviously we're required to have students go through to confirm if they are under the influence or in possession of substances in school and that's the way we proceed so a lot of the suspensions when we've had this reviewed externally when we did our our equity audit there was a focus on objective versus subjective suspension and there was a analysis that this that we have far more objective suspensions in other words it's with clear evidence as opposed to attitude but I think we have to continue to look

014at our biases and we have to look beyond suspensions I think that you know one of the important lessons for us to think about is that kids learn about policing in school that's their first experience with discipline and it doesn't have to always be about suspension it's about how they may be treated in other ways and so as we look at that discipline it's not just about the statistics that we have for suspension which are very very low in our district but it's it's always thinking about how we're talking to even our youngest kids when they make mistakes and and who we're talking to and so that's part of the work that's ahead of us Steve I'm wondering you know we obviously have had a big drop in the suspension rate and I might have

015missed this I'm sorry I fell offline for a second but you know I know you're leaving now and what is the what is the plan moving forward to continue to have restorative justice being a more widespread in the schools and to continue this kind of hopefully downward trend yeah so it's a great question so we've got work around restorative practices that's being written into the codes of conduct for our schools we're continuing with training in that area I know dr. Tara Doty who has been instrumental in leading us in that effort with her colleague Randy Greene is going to be coming back and doing more work with our staff I know that the students at the high school have written statements around restorative justice and and sort of anti-bias work that they that will be

016included in the the code of conduct that goes out to their classmates and I to to just this point I think one of the steps is that we start we looking from a policy perspective at how we're continuing to support and document the work in that area can I ask a question of just because I know Jess you have raised something that we haven't addressed yet and the possibility of having some of our policies gone through in a premier an anti-racism perspective could you explain that a little bit so everyone could hear it or I think I was just inspired listening to ruh-huh Benjamin speaking about her work with the just data lab and I know there are there are both through Princeton and also listening to Abram Kennedy's speaking about his work at bu

017I think there are there are potentially several academic centers that are that can look through policies for things we might be missing when it comes to implicit bias and the the ways in which our policies and our practices may be impacting students differently and so I just think we we are we we do ourselves a service by by looking at the ways we could consider putting or putting all of our policies through the lens of of anti-racism and and thinking about how we can not just not be racist but the anti-racist in the way that we carry on teaching and learning in the inner school so I think I am hopeful that we can we can find students who are willing to look at this with us I think our students also with it within

018the high school that are taking part in racial literacy coursework would also be really important voices to to be looking at those policies with us so I hope we have a really inclusive really rigorous continuous process of evaluating what we're doing and and hold ourselves accountable to be better so maybe that's something that through the policy committee when we're back or well you know we could come up with a proposal that that might be vetted through the board and the administration yeah and the equity committee I think also I think we want to be working closely with policy in equity and thinking about how we can we can work work even more intentionally on this thank you all right is there anything else on an item if not I guess it's on to my report

019and I want to just and I just want to say setting the stage that I want to start with gratitude to this to to this board and to to our staff to our administrators to this board and to to extraordinary superintendents who are performing any complex baton pass pulling off an educational and logistical miracle reinventing how we deliver a safe and appropriate education to every one of our students our 4,000 students in the fall and it's only 10 weeks away so I just want to give a big shout out to this effort and you know our board we met with very Galasso our new interim superintendent begins in July first we met with him last week and I think we came away from that we were unified in our desire to focus on this goal

020of getting our schools back up and running and everything else we are doing now is secondary to and note that among the fact on the many feats that the the PBS team has already accomplished during this emergency includes you know taking all learning remote in a matter of days delivering educational and social emotional supports and education to our students for over three months culminating with some very unique and beautiful virtual ceremonies you know we've all had the opportunity to see but you can watch the JW and the PHS graduations online and they are they are beautiful and very special and clearly a lot of thought went into making them special this year for the students who couldn't experience these things these rituals in person so gratitude to all the people who put those together for

021us and I have a child in each of those classes and I know my family's very grateful and we also have safely delivered regular meals to 500 students and their faith for the past three months and that will continue and we've also forged stronger community partnerships to help inform the community and to support our families and so we've done so much and you know there were stumbles there were setbacks but for the most part you know we served our students and families during a very difficult time so I think you know gratitude all around for that and then looking forward in the next ten weeks it's really all hands on deck we have saved we saved a million dollars in operational costs do the remote learning but we are facing unknown costs of restarting in

022the pandemic and you know socially distance transportation reconfigured schedules buildings and classrooms PPE cleaning and other staffing all sorts of things we don't know yet what the magnitude will be and we also don't know what will happen with state aid which is six million dollars of our 100 million dollar budget so there's a lot of uncertainties and we also don't want to know what the state will mandate that we have to do but we're working on our best plan based on our own best thinking but what I want to do say is we know that and we're confident that our PPS team and staff of staff and administrators is up to this challenge and I just wanted to give a shout out tonight because when you think about what we've accomplished and what's in front

023of us it's just pretty awesome and gratitude all around for the for the teams that have made it happen and for everyone's hard work and since we're talking about gratitude I'm just gonna go right into more gratitude more specific gratitude and that is we have some proclamations and tributes tonight to two very important people who are are leaving us and I think we'll start with a proclamation for an eco sack and Debbie did you want to read that Frost yes I'd love to aqua mation upon the retirement of Ana Gonzalez Cossack whereas it is the desire of the Princeton Public School Board of Education to honor those who have given their time and energy to render valuable service to our district and whereas annie cook after us annie annie gonzales cossack has served the district

024for 17 years in the role of assistant superintendent of curriculum and it's action and former principal of little Brook school to the benefit of our students and our schools and whereas Annie Gonzales Cossack can conscientiously prepared for career of public service in education through dedicated professional training and whereas the students of Princeton Public Schools have greatly benefited from her many contributions to the district now therefore be it resolved that the members of the Princeton Public School Board of Education warmly commend Annie Gonzales Cossack for services to the students staff parents and community of Princeton and wish her well in her retirement and be it further resolved that a copy of this property Proclamation suitably endorsed be transmitted to her endorsed by the order of the Princeton Public School Board of Education as duly expressed on

025this 23rd day of June 2020 yep and so I'll just go cuz I got the mic now personally I just want to thank Annie for your leadership at little Brook while both my children was there I really really appreciate that and all their growing in their you know their start of their education so thank you and best of luck with everything now well the way we can do this if board members would like to say anything and we can talk about Annie and then we'll read a proclamation for Steve and we can talk about Steve and then we'll open it for the public to talk about either of them if they'd like to say that and we also we've had some in-person congratulations of them last week as a board an administrative team and I

026think we've asked people want to write to them that's that's very welcome and there is a zoom tomorrow if anyone wants to join and doesn't doesn't know about it to talk to them and give toasts so we're we're covering them all around or right now do any board members want to make any comments about Annie um Jess can you hear me yes any others have known you longer and better I have always appreciated the way you've been unflappable and laser-focused on answering our questions knowing that we are aboard who asked a lot of questions and more than anything I have appreciated the way you light up when you speak about what you know and what you did or heard or thought about related to student you have been the epitome of a devoted educator and

027we are so fortunate to have had you here and I'm so fortunate to work with you thank you you know Betsy Annie I would just like to say I just think the whole community it should know you have not skipped one beat not even one second since announcing your retirement you have tirelessly worked these last months the way you've worked the entire time I've known you and from what I have heard certainly your whole career it is hard for me to believe that as of next week you will no longer be working with all of us but I thank you so much for what you've given so consistently and so collaboratively and really right up until the very very end so I hope you enjoy a very relaxing and happy retirement right yeah so you

028know first let me just start off by the you know the general rule of thumb is if you're leaving you've got to find a great replacement and I commend you on finding such a promising up-and-comer all before but all three McDonald children thrived at little Brook annie followed another exceptional principle and made that look like an incredibly easy transition and I I don't know if we can arrange this but I think the appropriate ride into retirement would be on raviolis back so on behalf of all to second what Debbie had to say I think that there are probably solid thousand little Brook families that feel that you and the teachers and the staff that you worked with have fundamentally change the lives of a lot of young people some of whom were in their 20s

029now for the better and they really reinforced for me just out tremendously impactful the elementary school experience can be on the growth and development of our children so Danny thank you thank you Anna okay so I've spoken a lot but I was just I wanted to share this story Annie so my so we moved here my son was in second grade and he had a lot of challenges and he just finished 10th grade with just he's doing incredible he finished AP US history and I was just think I've been thinking a lot about the special education families and I've been thinking back to what if I you know what if we were a remote learning today and how I would handle it and I wouldn't be handling it well and I think back as to

030how lucky we were to have the educators that we had in place to to support my son and and help him grow like Brian said elementary school is so important and and it occurred to me that that's all because of you Annie and the building you ran and the people you hired so I will be reaching out to you in two years when Jack graduates high school I expect you to be there I'll try to get you a ticket no promises maybe you can start working on that too and really it's uh it's because of the schools that you put into a place and there's no amount of money or any amount of thanks that can express how grateful I am so thank you any best wishes if there's no other board members to Steve

031did you want to say something I have known Annie for more than 25 years we work together in in Hopewell we actually taught professional development for teachers together so when I had the opportunity to bring her on board as the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction I knew I was getting the finest educator on the planet and when someone talked about her being laser focused that has been Annie's work to transform our schools into the the most high quality and caring environments they can possibly be and I think that it's you know Annie's ability to to balance her her understanding of really high quality instruction with a deep care for for kids and for staff that has made her as great as she has been in this role and it's been three years Annie which

032is not a lot of time in central office and yet the transformation has been incredible so I thank you you made my job a lot easier and you have the most important and difficult one great uni did you want to say anything myself I do I just want to thank the board and the community for the acknowledgement for the kind words I am truly grateful in this moment of gratitude for the opportunities that the Princeton Board of Ed has afforded me in these last 17 years I have learned from everyone I have learned from listening to the community from the board from my colleagues from teachers from from students especially I think I've learned the most from students and and my I think the the best piece of advice I could give anyone is to

033listen to the children because they will tell you what you need to know so so just keep an ear to that all of the time next Tuesday is going to come way too quickly but I want you to know that I am actually taking a little piece of each of you with me when I leave there isn't a better place to work than in Princeton and just to quote the creator of poo you know how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard and I am truly lucky and it is truly hard but I thank you all and I will be following you on social media on your website they might even stop in to a board meeting or two no thank you and and I appreciate your words to Steve

034can I guess I can wait I have something I wanted to say about Steve but I can wait on that do you later okay thank you Thank You Annie just did you want to read for Steve on the proclamation Proclamation upon the retirement of Steven C Cochran whereas it is the desire of the Princeton Public Schools Board of Education to honor those who have given up their time and energy to render valuable service to our district and whereas Steven C Cochran has served as superintendent in the district for six years to the benefit of our students and our schools and whereas Steven C Cochran conscientiously prepared for a career of public service and education through dedicated professional training and whereas the students at Princeton Public Schools have greatly benefited from his many contributions to our

035district now therefore be it resolved that the members of the Princeton Public Schools Board of Education warmly commend Stephen C Cochrane for services to the students staff parents and community of Princeton and wish him well in his retirement and be it further resolved that a copy of this Proclamation suitably endorsed be transmitted to him endorsed by the public schools duly expressed on this day June 2020 thank you how do we have anyone who would like to say some words to Steve Jess Eve I remember when you were named and I was excited because I knew you from when I was a student and you were a Dean at Princeton I knew that you were a kind thoughtful and strong leader who understood the complexity of this place called Princeton I remember when you started in

036your first day you had to call us snow day you handled it with calm and grace and humor and I felt confident you would handle whatever would come your way I just couldn't quite imagine what that would be I remember lots of up-and-down days in between consistently coming away with the clear sense that you care deeply about the perspectives of all of us here whether or not things went as planned or as everyone wanted by traditional members this district is always going to show up as an excellent school system but you made it mean something deeper because you understood that student well-being would not be excellent if it wasn't a priority and you showed that equity would not be a realistic goal if we didn't do a lot of listening and learning and relationship building

037about the full range of experiences in our schools there's so much more to do before we have equity here in Princeton identifying we are not immune to racism has been part of your legacy the next part of the commitment to anti racism is on us all of us our whole community and I'll just read two lines from a poem I found about bicycling called a ride through time and it says I know exactly how far travelled I can feel how far I have moved I hope you feel that way when you reflect back on the ride that it's been in Princeton and we will continue along the way better for having had this journey with you thank you thank you Jess you suggest very nice who would like to hell Brian sure well you know

038I can't think of C without also thinking of our wonderful mission and if you ever could find the perfect superintendent to prepare all of our students to lead lives with joy and purpose this knowledgeable creative and compassionate citizens of the global society I don't think he could do any better than Steve and he leads by example he brings it every day it is a very hard and demanding job but he somehow seems to exude the joy and purpose that we hope that all of our children will will exhibit as they go through their lives and their time with students and you know in the words creative and compassionate you know Steve is one of the most creative thoughtful and compassionate people I have ever met I had the experience to work with a lot of

039leaders that I'm proud to say that I've learned an enormous amount just watching Steve in his role as a superintendent of our schools and I am so deeply grateful and thankful Steve for your work here and more importantly for committing your entire professional career to working with young people and ensuring that they have opportunities to be educated with an unwavering commitment to every single child thank you very much thank you bye I always like to speak Betsy Charl I'll be brief but I just I want to say Steve as an educator I'm inspired by your work as a board member I respect very much how you have done this very difficult job and as a parent most of all I'm so grateful for the work you've done in this school district and I'm so grateful

040that my son's get to benefit from that as do all the students in the district so thank you thank you I'm looking for hands a lot of people saving up for tomorrow we have opportunity so we're all gonna paint you guys many times that's gonna come out tomorrow um okay Annie Annie your meeting yeah yeah I just wanted to say that Steve is a visionary leader who lives his message in every word in every action that he takes and he is a model and has been a model for the rest of us and it has just been a joy and a privilege to have worked with him again but what what I wanted to say was that when I was a new young administrator in Hopewell I that's where I had the great fortune of

041working with Steve and other principals and superintendents assistant superintendents who really guided me well when I took the job in Princeton and I went in 2003 I came with having been mentored by the very best Steve was one of those and I can tell you in that first year as I made decisions and I did things and said things I would think in my head hmm that was Steve you know and so when I say to you is that he may have been here six and a half years physically he really has been here as long as I've been here because I brought a little piece of him with me when I came so thank you Steve for you are mentoring me and and I am thrilled that we were able to work these last

042years together so thank you I just like to say quickly um Steve as a parent and a board member I like think I like to think about your analogy that you use of a battleship that this district is a battleship and how it how its difficult to make it do fast fancy maneuvers but it just needs to move over time and I just want to say I'm I'm deeply grateful for your devotion to this calling it's not a job to you it's clearly a in a ministry and a passion because to see you and the energy you put into this job is just really extraordinary and as a parent and a community member I'm just so grateful that you've taken the battleship that is our school district and just moved it in a very significant

043direction towards towards equity towards justice towards joy and you know on the school board going to different conferences when you say you're from Princeton and they come over and they say you know we really love your mission your mission is really cool you you guys focus on joy and you know it says so much about what you brought this to the sister can how you've moved us and we will continue on that path and as Jess says hopefully we will continue to move even further towards joy and so equity and towards justice and I'm just grateful for your steering us for the last five years and all of the all of the heart you put into your leadership so thank you thank you thank you all and now um Matt can we open it up

044to public comment if anyone wants to make any comments about Steve Ranney tour just raise your hand out there if anyone has any comments in the audience and I will call on you Laurie Weir yeah can you I don't know if you can hear me but and I just want to say thank you to both of you you both had a pretty profound influence on our entire families you know my both of our children's education and I appreciate you both immensely and I really appreciated what you just said about the mission because that was a project that Steve had a lot of people involved in creating I was on that and his deep caring for the kids it's just so unmistakable so thank you thank you thank you Laurie yep cherry I just wanted to

045thank both Steve and Annie I've learned quite a bit about education that I didn't know before and you know with all the back-and-forth and everything it's been quite an interesting time to learn I think with remote learning becoming suddenly such a big deal it's really a tough area to be in but I think that in the future we will actually get opportunities from it and be able to a new portfolio to how you educate people and so I've learned a lot from that as well I didn't know zoom it all myself and learning along with everybody else and so I just want to say thank you for all your efforts and good luck thank you kid Craig Stankiewicz can can people hear me now oh great and it's great to see everybody I'm I'll keep

046this very brief but I'm talking as a member of the public a member of the community as a parent and I just want to in that role thank both Annie and Steve for all they've done I was privileged to have had a small inside look at the immense amount of time and effort and energy that they put in on behalf of an incredible team on behalf of our children in our community Annie I saw you at all different times of the day in the night I always learned from you every time you spoke in front of the board or committee other occasions and I just wanted to say that anything you said you could always tell that you were saying it on behalf of our children most of all thank you so much Steve it

047was such an honor to work with you you're amazing the through line in my mind for everything that so many of us worked so hard for is equity and making every child known and that or is the through line that that every district should be focused on you've moved this community forward so far and I have a good immense amount of gratitude for that and I know that so many others in our community have as well I've seen you be so open and so honest and caring with all different types and members and and parts of our community and we're going to miss that and thank you thank you for everything you've done thanks Greg Bob Jean Steve hey Bob hi buddy I am so gonna miss you especially on the sidelines of PAS football

048games you and I scare cheering on our Tigers okay just thank you for all you've done for my alma mater bestival pleasure having you here you've added so much to the district thank you for all you've done hey so first of all thank you very much Annie I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to work with you but I've heard so many great things before you became the assistant superintendent and it was lovely to see you in action and Steve I just want to say as a parent I'm so glad you stuck around until my child graduated you are amazing and the warmth and love and care you brought to all of our kids and as everyone has pointed out the focus on equity I'm just so immensely grateful that you were here for us

049and you really gave it your all and I think we are just so so lucky to have had you thank you thank you anybody else out there okay thank you huh back to me thank you everyone it's this nice nice way to nice things to do in our to show gratitude and we're so lucky to have had both of you the next thing I just want to quick give a update on myeloma in McBroom we haven't talked about that publicly for a while and we did take a break during the emergency because they were in the process of doing large public forums and obviously we had to change course so we have met with Eminem to talk about how we can get the full value of that resource in this in this scenario in this

050stage stage of where we're in right now and we are going to try to update the scope of deliverables under the existing contract to bring the scope back to three to five years and to focus on options to meet enrollment challenges at JW in particular that's the most urgent the K through five and then the PHS using the current sites that we have so we want them to look at what we've got and give us there they were about to come to us with scenarios and anyway in the planning process and we just want to focus it a little bit more so that we we can get value from them and also have them act more as a consultant to the board give us options which we then can review with the community given our

051circumstance now it's very difficult to do the larger meetings and they will provide a revised roadmap of deliverables based on mid-range enrollment assumptions which they will explain why they're picking and what will try to take a midline and they will give us advice on specific capacity questions and hopefully give us a final report to be delivered in 70 to 90 days to a forum inform our decision-making and that we can talk about with the public they we also have our strategic advisory committee Bob Powell that chair who was agreed to take some of the larger land use questions and take it off the table for mmm so they can focus on the buildings and the capacity that we have and the strategic advisory committee is going to look at the use of our land that

052we have including the Jaypee land we have some extra land next to the school and we've had questions of unencumbered TSA's and use of that land we want to look at that and understand it Valley Road site and looking at where in town perhaps our buses and other vehicles might be kept just to allow us to understand some of the variables that are relevant to our larger long-term planning so we will be coming back and talking to the board about that and and also then letting the public know what we're doing I just want to also mention that last night the council adopted their starting to adopt all the ordinances that relate to the affordable housing settlement and I just want to note that they've actually done some new ordinances that permit more housing density

053then under the original settlement that we've been talking about all along and in particular on June 15th they introduced an ordinance regarding accessory dwelling units granny flats and last night they added additional properties and density densities and Nassau Street overlay that was in the affordable housing which we have asked Bob Powell to look at that and to inform us as to how that affects school impact and we just want to say and I think it's important for the board to note you know all of this we don't necessarily take a position on con density or housing but it's important for the public to understand that every council decision that adds density right or additional housing does have a cost to taxpayers in terms of school impact right you're either going to have to pay for

054larger facilities or we will have increased class sizes just is what it is and we try to keep watch but we do understand that there's a number of new developments that are coming up the pike even despite the co-ed situation so we're trying to keep an eye on that so that's that's the planning update are there any questions from the board so hi um thank you for that so when you say 70 to 90 days from right now so that would be like the end of September they'll give us a report on all the stuff you listed versus kind of what they were doing before you know it's pretty much what they were doing before but they're just gonna give us options and answers as opposed to having forums and then developing and then they're

055just gonna cut we're their consultants they're gonna advise us based on their expertise and then we can make decisions okay are we as a board meeting with them anymore we will yeah we will I think they're going to do work and come back to us and answer questions well we'll see before they we finalized that scope I'll share it with the board we'll see what they give us but we've been giving them the questions that keep recurring that we want to address okay yeah I mean you know it's been a while and um and we're still saying under the same amount of money for what we're getting yeah okay thanks okay um that takes us to the superintendence report Steve Thank You Beth well this is obviously my my final board meeting as superintendent of

056the Princeton Public Schools so I just I just want to begin by saying what an honor it has been to serve this community I've had the privilege to collaborate with some amazingly smart and caring colleagues I've had the privilege to work with some amazingly smart and dedicated board members and the privileged to consult and work alongside with community partners who are truly truly committed to supporting the children and we all share and most of all I've had the privilege of watching as our as our students live lives of joy and purpose as is brian highlighted and that's whether they're performing a play or singing a song or scoring a goal or solving the problem or feeding the hungry or tutoring a classmate or leading a protest my work and and all of our work is

057about kids I hope moving forward the the board continues to focus on that as its sole goal and that is my my focus for my comments tonight I have four important items that I want to touch on related to our kids and the first is about food our most basic necessity today is Tuesday which means that we once again distributed a week's worth of meals to 500 of our kids who experience food insecurity and as the board knows we are continuing the feeding of those students and their families throughout this summer so send hunger packing shop has been helping us with this effort and tonight I am I'm delighted and honored to announce that we have a new partner in this work recognizing the urgency of food insecurity in our community and especially for our

058children Princeton Univ city has generously stepped forward in a major way to join us in the provision of delicious high-quality freshly prepared meals for our students and their families and we have someone with us tonight Smita Hanif the person who oversees all of campus dining for the university she's their assistant vice president and also a recognized chef and an authority on food systems and agriculture and nutrition I'm delighted that she's taken a few minutes to be actually a little bit more than a few minutes I'm sorry Smith went longer than I thought but I'm delighted that you're here tonight to explain the summer food and nutrition program that Princeton is undertaking with with shopman and the public schools and if you could just say a few words to the board about how that idea came

059about and how it's going to be implemented for our our kids thank you Steve thank you for the kind invitation to join the board well what an honor first off as a resident of Princeton and having a son who's graduated from this oldest trade it's been a true honor to partner with Christopher big schools along with shop to think through and provide for our community at this current moment so in in thinking about how we might extend our support princeton support to the community we thought food insecurity was a topic that surfaced up early on and we then started communication with yourself and with your enthusiastic openness and ingenuity we now have ready to launch what we call as a summer food and nutrition program the program is a confirmation of what the school district

060already does through shop our chefs and management team along with my staff will be preparing healthy nutritious globally diverse menus for our children and their families the program includes weekly dinners for 325 families 14 days a week and Steve said I should share a proposed many of a week one so are you going to go ahead and do that so chef Gerry and chef Ryan have written the first menu of it is if you include three bean salad a vegetable Paia for one of the nights barbecued chicken with roasted sweet potatoes and roasted zucchini for another day and finally beef and broccoli with vegetable fried rice and how they cook used by chef Bryan the idea here is in our preliminary conversations with Steve he was sharing about this the cultural sensitivity will adjust sensitivity

061health sensitivities that exist and how might we through this partnership best support our students so we will be conscientious we are not going to be successful with every day's menus but we will make that effort and be nimble as we learn to the program the program starts on July 7th and will run all Tuesdays became July 7th and up to August 11th and we are estimating about fifty nine hundred meals for the four five hundred students who are on the school districts free and produced new program again on behalf of the university it just huge thank you to the Princeton Public School District and to shop for this continued collective effort in support of our community if anyone has questions I'm happy to answer and as we're working through through the program I will be

062available to us - - questions about the program thank you Steve I'll turn it back to you I just want to mention that she's actually she's dropping packages everyone hear me okay fine okay so she's uh she's she's putting in a letter and something for kids to color in there and she's just she noted in her her draft letter just I ordinarily get to cook for you know all of the students at Princeton University but this summer I had the honor of preparing meals for each of you and I think this is really coming from her heart and from the heart of the institution at Princeton and we're incredibly grateful for the partnership and I know that our our families will be as well so we look forward to working with you and to doing

063the deliveries on Tuesday of the freshly-prepared dinners for four as well as the weekend meals for four students and and joining shop as they provide fresh produce as well for our family so I think we've got a good system in place to keep our our kids and families well fed this summer thank you any other questions from the board thank you so much so I guess what I'm sorry I had trouble getting off from you I just wanted to say thank you Steve for and Smita for you know Steve for setting this up before you leave it's very important I'm involved in some organizations that deliver food and there's there's a growing eating for instance so I appreciate your attention to this as you you know leave so thank you absolutely it's been a privilege

064all right so second issue I want to touch on again I want to acknowledge that our students are still feeling the sadness the anger the frustration the confusion the call to action that so many of us have felt as we continue to process the killing of George Floyd and the the long centuries of subjugation and discrimination experienced by black people and people of color in in this country and you know for some the events of the past weeks were a first exposure to the depth and degree of inequity based on race and for for many the event sadly underscore and all too often occurrence and for all of our students there is some degree of pain and trauma and that is not pain or trauma that goes away just because school has ended so we

065had graduation we had the moving on ceremony but our kids are still wrestling with these feelings and we want to help them process that so just as we did with our our staff we invited dr. Tara Doty and her colleague Randy green to provide some processing sessions for our students and so they will be offering those this week bleep tomorrow and Thursday there will be two sessions for our high school students two sessions or our students at the middle school and I'm just I'm grateful to our counseling staff who have helped to support this and we will have counselors who will join them in those sessions there will be at least one session for specifically for black indigenous and other people of color so they'll have an opportunity to share in that space dr. Doty

066is I think many of you know has been a consultant to our district for many years and has great expertise in restorative and trauma-informed practices and she's just a really kind and caring person so she and Randy will be supported in the sessions as I said by some of our counselors and all the adults will be taking back the ideas they learn to be able to share with our administrative team as we continue to learn and grow and make changes in our system the third point I wanted to to raise is that summer school begins next Monday and it's going to be a virtual experience for many of our students with special needs who are part of our extended school year program and for other students who are going to be benefiting from more group

067small group instruction and so we look forward to welcoming our students on the 29th of June for more live interactions with our teachers and we also look forward to support from tutors from Princeton University's pace Center for civic engagement I think I mentioned this is the last meeting but I just want to highlight that that the pace Center where their director Charlotte Collins is going to be piloting a tutoring program for we're hoping maybe 40 of our students and the tutors will be undergraduates and graduate students and others from the University who received training and background checks and they'll work in pairs to to check in with our students and provide them with both support and inspiration as they undertake their their studies this summer the hope is to start small and this with this

068group in summer school but then scale up in the fall when the pace Center hopes to have between five and seven hundred tutors ready to help our kids so once again it's the University who's stepping forward with this wonderful human resource to support our kids and we're incredibly grateful to them for that because we will need that which brings me to the the fourth and final focus that I wanted to mention tonight and it's really about the reopening of our schools and that is a task that is enormous ly important and enormous ly complex but fortunately we have some really good people who are we're focused on that and dr. Galasso and I have spent a lot of time talking about it he's been involved in sitting in on a number of other discussions we've

069had with the reopening team reopening teams is I've explained to the board and to the public in the past we have we're looking at our reopening through the lens of health and we've looking at it through the perspective of the physical health of our students and staff the emotional health and then the educational health and we have an overarching team of about thirty-five that's that's looking at the re-entry and then we have subcommittees who are looking at each of those subcategories and so process that we're engaged in now and dr. glass you can jump in you and I have been talking about this quite a bit one of the first things that we are doing is we're doing surveys we're trying to gather data points so we have I believe Annie's office is she's coordinating

070the educational health piece and you put out a survey yesterday that was trying to gain data from parents about the reopening and some of the scenarios that we are looking at as well as transportation and technology and so we're gathering data from our our families we are gathering data from our staff we're trying to gain a sense of how our staff their their comfort level their their feelings about returning to school we know that nationally the surveys have suggested that 10 to 20 percent of staff are going to have difficulty returning to school because of health related issues underlying conditions those kinds of things so we want to be attuned to that and think that through we are engaged in doing a needs analysis for the physical changes we have to make to our schools

071so I think we looked at our plexiglass screens for our buses we have 32 33 buses and putting up plexiglass screens to protect the kids we actually can get more students on a bus if we have that protection but it's 70 thousand dollars in just plexiglass screens for our buses alone we then have we are now looking at the entire district and all the spaces that might need that kind of apparatus but we're also looking at where we put hand sanitizers and hand-washing stations and we're having to think through you know social distancing as students arrive in school and temperature checks and what are the apparatus that we're going to need to be taking temperatures quickly and so there's there's a host of physical issues that we are looking at we're not doing this alone

072we've got internally we're looking at it with our staff we're also looking at what other districts are doing in this state and around the country we're doing that with our social-emotional efforts and our our strategies around around the educational support for our kids we are looking at a few options related to return it is most likely we're going to be looking at a hybrid option at least initially so is that going to be you know two days a week you know half the alphabet coming in and then you know another two days of the day off and then another two days is it gonna be alternating weeks are we gonna have to think through phasing things in so maybe we're not able to start with our perfect hybrid scenario right away we may have to

073phase in over a month or two depending on health restrictions depending on the feedback we get in terms of the readiness of all of our staff to be present to our students so I know that we are we are working hard on putting in place the pieces that we can we are still waiting for guidance from the state which I believe is gonna be forthcoming in the next week or so and that made guide us in our efforts but we are moving ahead with trying to order what we can to plan what we can to gain the data that we can and I know that dr. Galasso Bharath you want to say anything I know you have a process or a little bit timeline in your time frame and your head as to when you

074may be able to present some ideas to the board and the community and how you might be seeking feedback from the families as well so I sure I appreciate that first I want to thank the board the when the board engaged me to become the interim superintendent they indicated that they would want me to spend a lot of time in the transition process and basically I'm gonna have an opportunity to spend six weeks being engaged in every facet of school operations which is tremendously helpful to begin this task on July 1 I want to thank Steve and his staff for their cooperation and giving me full access to whatever I needed so I do appreciate at night and I think the boy was forward-looking in providing this transition period but Steve mentioned the timeline we've

075been looking at different models as Steve has mentioned we're now going to be assessing some data points as the information is collected but my initial timeline is I hope to have some tentative plans out to the Board of Education for their review about July 15th because by that point I'm hoping the state will will be giving us its guidance and then we'll be able to formulate some ideas giving the board a few days to come back to us with some feedback I would hope to be out to the community by the end of July with the equity grooves PTO C and the various other Community Engagement groups you should just to send out our tentative plans and provide a community an opportunity to react and by August 15th depending upon a million different things whether

076or not the virus spikes whether or not New Jersey moves back and his face is removed for words in his faces by August 15th we hope to then give parents guidance on what our initial plan is going to be for the opening of September 7th and as Steve has indicated it could be 50% of our students it could be 25% of C's it could be a number of different plans it's really going to depend on staff accessibility staff being able to return students who are returning or not returning and whether or not you know we're able to staff schools and whether or not we have to develop a cyber option for those students and staff members who may not be attending so I want the community to be assured that they will have an opportunity

077to be engaged and be engaged a number of times throughout the summer before the plans are finalized and approved by the Board of Education I'm I'm very pleased to work with the staff they're very talented and Steve and Annie have done a great job of building a staff and I'm hoping with the boards and to their credit they have defined this is the single focus for us for the next 60 to 90 days that we'll be able to have an opening that is based on science and the health of our students is priority and and you know the fact that we can produce and provide a quality education for all of our kids thank you Thank You Barry I would just building on some of what Barry said also highlight that child care is a

078really important consideration for us so that's something that's in the survey as well as we look at these options we're aware that many of our families are gonna need to be back at work and and how do we manage with the child care so that's a data point that's really important to us and may involve more than just the schools is we consider how we provide child care and a hybrid model where some of the learning may have to be remote on a regular basis the other really critical point for us with some urgency is around technology I know the board is perhaps looking to have a meeting next week to examine our proposals for how we might move to a one-to-one technology environment where every student has a computer so that if we do

079have to be in a virtual setting we are able to do that easily and make sure that we have connectivity for all of our kids and then the other thing that is also associated with technology is the learning management system we pressure tested it with remote learning over the past few months and there were some holes and we want to make sure that we have a learning management system that works for our students and for our staff and our parents so those are two important elements in the technology decisions that we have to make soon so that we can begin to really train and have our teachers work with one another to enhance their ability to provide remote instruction we're looking at the training and support we can provide for parents and for our students

080as well so the summer is going to be an incredibly busy time and I'm grateful that you know Barry and we'll be we'll be helping to lead that effort and I know they're in good hands can I ask a question please either you or dr. colosso maybe could you provide some information as to potential in-person classes for some of our special ed students and what you're anticipating and and how that's being communicated be talking about in this summer are you talking about next year no I'm talking in this summer there was some talk about bringing some of our most disabled children back yeah so he said we're starting with summer school virtually for the first 4 or 5 weeks depending on the program and then we are looking at the possibility of being able to

081provide some kind of in-person experience for students the end of August so that is part of the the work that we're undertaking right now as we think through the kinds of health protocols that we're going to have to have in place to make that happen but yes Mickey is looking at that and that is that is a hope in and a goal that we have so when do you anticipate that being communicated or finalized Steve I can answer that I talk to Mickey yesterday along with Steve and I'm hoping by by the middle of July that where we're focused on whether or not we can or cannot do it one of the one of the things that we're trying to make sure you want to make sure that we have all the PPE you want

082to make sure that we have transportation and everything else ready so that if we're able to bring staff in and able to do the last two weeks live we you know we're ready to do that so that's we're planning on now okay and that's been communicated to families because you know maybe people get emotional at this moment Mickey's communicating anything to the families because I think over the next 10 days we'll have a better view of when where and how we can provide that the in school alive instruction thank you teddy thanks um could you share with the board the survey that was sent out the one you just mentioned sure and you're able to do that from your office right thank you great the other question was in purchasing a lot of this stuff

083I wasn't sure if we're working with some of our other Mercer County school districts to get because you just mentioned you know how much those classes are and if you know we're able to do more bigger shopping because we worked with like West Windsor who but you know Montgomery who buses everybody so I was just curious if that is something and you know because look what happened before is the states were fighting over things and I'd hate to see that be you know I agree with you baby yeah no thank you for the suggestion okay that actually concludes that my comments I I just wanted to be able to end with sort of the transition to dr. Galasso and knowing that the district is in very good hands thank you Steve I think that under

084your report we go next to the PHS restroom concession storage discussion yes so yeah we have a number of people who I know will be offering input on this I want to just sort of set the stage with with the need so this is a facility three restrooms storage and concession facility for the the field area and I think it's important that the board and the public listening know that you know our fields our track our courts there are classrooms so every student at the high school is using them as part of the PE classes we have about half of our students who are participating in in sports after school so they use them for practice and play they're out there and right now oh I know and the whole school may come outside for

085if we have a lockdown we're not a lockdown but some kind of a swatting episode or some some kind of evacuation we have to take the whole school out there so the fields are getting a lot of use from our students and they're also obviously a place where the public comes and where we have spectators for events and and we are a community school and we want to be supportive of our community and bring people to to our games and we have porta-potties we do not have restrooms that that people can use so this is a basic health and hygiene issue we don't have access to fresh water out there we don't have access to ice which is actually a requirement if you can imagine you know playing sports on high heat and humidity days

086there are laws that require us to have access to ISO if we have to submerge a student for because of heatstroke you know we have to have that available now we have to drag the ice from inside the building students who need to use the restroom have to go inside the building if they don't want to use a porta potti it's it's a basic need we would we wouldn't expect that any classroom in our school would not have easy access to a washroom and and yet the classrooms that we have on our athletic fields do not and so I think everyone understands the need that we have here for this facility and question has been around the cost which is its bid out as a an alternate at five hundred and thirty thousand dollars which

087is more than I think a lot of us would want to spend and yet it of the ten contractors that bid on it the five hundred and thirty was the lowest bid and I think the average was around five hundred ninety five thousand and so there has been a lot of conversation about can we do this less expensively we looked at a prefab option which was suggested and we did our due diligence and examined three different prefab models and the cost when you include the digging of the trench and the plumbing and everything that was involved was almost identical to the five thirty with the added difficulty that we would then have to be managing the project ourselves as opposed to having the contractor doing that work and so I just lay that as groundwork

088for the discussion my recommendation is that this was part of the the referendum it was a piece that stayed in the referendum even as we pared down from our original referendum from 2018 I think we we owe it to our our students and our staff to have a clean accessible facility with with water and hand washing and and we owe it to our neighbors who we said we would provide this facility for so I think it's my recommendation that we move forward on the approval of this and I'm open it up for anyone else who wants to to comment before we have discussions on on Dave or or Brian as head of facilities Susan if you want to say anything um I guess I just invite Dave to say a bit more about the cost

089the cost comes as a surprise but back in 2018 when the the board was looking at more than a hundred and thirty million dollars of needed work and and worked hard to kind of limit that to the most urgent needs this facility made it onto that final list and the cost estimate then was five hundred and seventy five thousand dollars plus about a hundred and thirty thousand dollars of soft cost so despite the fact that we're two years later it's actually coming in a little bit below budget but I do think it would be helpful because it is such a number that just seems like a lot for a building that's not that big and I was just hoping that Dave my comment on the cost his perception of the value and the work that

090he has done to with the encouragement of board members who had some great suggestions consider other options that it may have made it possible do this for a lower cost yeah Brian you know we we did take a very close look at the design we reached out to a prefab company and got as close as we could to the easel design with that company the prefabs are a little bit limited in that their structure is designed a certain way so it travels on tractor trailers and the way the roof lines line up so we couldn't match identical to what we're looking for but I think we have more storage space we have more more concession stand space in our model in our design because they leave a lot of room for plumbing facilities and piping

091they create a plumbing chase which takes up viable space when you start looking at the amount of site work that has to go on there's well on close to under 300 feet in both directions from you know Moore and Walnut Streets because the sanitary is on one side of the art property and the fresh water supply and electric are on the other side so you start getting into that and trenching those distances and running all that piping but there's also a good amount of construction and concrete work that has to be done around the structure itself where the stairs are there's a large concrete landing where the concession stand is that has to be built so there's a lot more there a lot more intricacies to the project than just building this structure and even

092with the prefab structure you're responsible for laying out the doing all the excavation and work for the site creating a flat landing or site and forming out a gravel gravel base for the landing of the unit itself when it comes and some of the subsoil plumbing I do feel like we're getting a little we're getting a better structure they're both CMU masonry and concrete slabs but the internal walls on ours are masonry as opposed to like a prefab building so I think it's going to hold up over time a little better than a prefab structure would you know everything takes abuse especially outside things that are perhaps unmanned or unwatched 24 hours a day so I think it'll hold up a lot better for that as far as the price I mean I we I

093know initial estimates were up in the 700,000 range the fact that the numbers were so close and also that this was the lowest price you know not only did we take the lowest bidder for this project but this this small part of the overall nine million or so was law and I think if we if we were to take a step back and try to separate and build this building on its own I think we'd be paying even more for it because there is just a big cost advantage when it's under the umbrella of another large project so I don't know if there's anything else I could really say there's just a lot to it there's a lot internally plumbing there's a lot of heating there's ventilation you know it's not just sometimes you go

094to a park and you see a shell of a building with toilets urinals and sinks and a little roll-up door in a concession stand but this we have a nice machine in there like as we talked about and it's it's divided up so that that ice machine is accessible without going into the storage or the concession area some people were wondering why there were two sets of doors and so forth it's really done for security purposes and isolating the different areas but there were all kinds of things looked at we thought we could use a sprinkler system supply water line it comes in a faux walnut that's not not allowed by New Jersey water we couldn't possibly take electric from the existing pump house that was there because that has a 200 amp service and

095this building alone requires a 200 amp service so we'd have to double the capacity to that line so we really in a short period of time did a pretty deep look into the details and all the aspects even the site work and utility work we came in with our price we were about a thousand dollars off compared to what the successful contractor for the high school project was at so we I think I feel comfortable with the numbers we that we were on the money next day I'll ask the question so first of all I support the bathrooms I was involved in planning the referendum in 2018 I doubt anyone on the board or administration spent more time at the neighbors talking about people urinating in their backyards and sharing pictures so I understand there's

096a need however the referendum that was passed in 2018 had other projects and one of them was the C econnect er @ JW which I understand was tabled in December so when I rejoined the board I was very surprised by that because the thinking behind that C II connector was that it would enable the traffic flow at jw2 is better right now when there is inclement weather that that passage between the C and E wing is closed and so it just creates a bottleneck in JW we know in September we're going to have more than 850 kids and if the projections hold true we know next year we'll have close to 900 and then a thousand so I I guess I'd like to understand as far as priorities though how it was determined that the

097restrooms were a more important priority than the C e connector and so that's my question I'll answer part I don't know if that was determined or I don't believe that the SI iike nectar may not happen I think it could happen we still have other products parts of the referendum project I think when we went to go bid to high school I think everyone was nervous what the bid would come in because it is such a large part of the budget so I think the board can very easily consider it either when we do the Jaypee years as a separate project and I don't see it as an either/or I see it as a hopefully and well I just feel like I've asked for information for months now we had a meeting on June 9th

098with Dave Harding who said he would get back to some options that we have for the C e connector which again we know we're gonna have kids in Jade up JW in the fall and next year we don't know it's very unlikely we're gonna have fall sports and you know at the high school so as far as priorities again the fact that this is where we're putting our money just says that that is a priority and I'm just concerned because a decision like this should should be discussed and I was under the impression we would discuss it so where are we as far as if we have to do this ee connector which Matt sent an email that was going to be around 150,000 where does that money do is there money left on the

099referendum for that so Susan I think accurately described back when the pig were opened in December that the fear was because we had higher bids on our most of our HVAC jobs so the concern was to award $151,000 alternate then could possibly put other things in jeopardy so it wasn't an either/or position we are at costs that are going to go into our capital reserve assuming that the Jaypee hvac project is awarded which is a strong assumption being that all the other Elementary's got HVAC upgrades mm-hmm I can add one note which was as the JW project was moving forward in the spring of 2019 the principal came forward and despite a lot of time you know having you know worked hard to identify the needs for JW expressed a concern that an even higher

100priority than the the connector was to significantly expand and improve the nurses suite which given the unfortunate circumstances of coronavirus turns out to be a really good good thing for us and added about three hundred and thirty thousand dollars of cost and so as we tried to do our best to stay within budget which is been impossible due to some estimates that just haven't been on target you know you know there was a desire to do the most that we could at Jacob without completely crowding out either the work at the high school or JP and the the the connector was deemed by the the JW and administration and Steve to be a less of a priority it wasn't removed it was just tabled as you said and it can absolutely be rebid we can

101do it on our own we can consider making it part of the Jaypee work we can also modify the Jaypee work but you know there are a lot of hard decisions that need to get made and you know that that's one that is still out there and it's it's a great question for this board which is how high of a priority the the seee connector and is it a higher priority than the restroom facility and I guess Matt can also talk about you know what the impact would be because if we do the restroom facility and JP the HVAC at JP is as is currently contemplated we almost certainly will be dipping into capital reserve capital reserve is already taxed monies can only be used for capital projects so it's not eligible for any of

102the the kovat related expenses that we've identified yet but we we don't want to over drawdown and I think right the current estimate is that we'd be taking about $800,000 out of capital reserve reducing it from two point three to one point five million dollars approximately if all of our estimates are accurate which includes an estimate for the Jaypee work it also includes what we hope are generous allowances for a variety of other things including change orders and furniture so I don't know how to answer answer the question in a way other than to say that these are these are tough calls and personally I'd like to do both and I've been very supportive of the connector I asked if there was a way to get it included in the the PHS project but but

103that's a group decision because right now with the information that we have it would mean that we would probably need an approximately 150 thousand dollars of additional capital reserve so and my concern is I'm sure I hope epidemic comes back with an option for trailers because there's no way we're going to be able to build as fast as the kids are coming and so that money also has to come out of capital reserves and if I recall correctly with the two trailers at the high school cost $400,000 so what if we need for trailers so that's my concern is that you know what are the priorities and again that's up for the board to discuss and how much are we comfortable taking out of capital reserve well I'd like to share a perspective as well

104when I think of thee of this project I break it down into three essential parts thank you thank you Daphna what is the bathroom which I see as a need to have we can argue whether we need three bathrooms or two one should be a aba-approved of course I see the concession stand as a nice to have the night thing the storage unit as something we could purchase at Home Depot for a couple of thousand dollars so I have concerns over price five hundred thirty thousand dollars is a ton of money and the way capital reserves gets funded it comes from fund balance or surplus so to the extent that we draw down capital reserve we at some point have to fund we have to replenish it we would replenish it from our fund balance

105which means it would be less money available for any koban nineteen incremental expense from relaunching back back into the schools so so then that let me talk about timing because we just awarded the high school bid with all its alternate alternate which is the largest part of the referendum almost 40% of the total 26.9 that was approved and we're working our way through JW and we have Johnson Park to go next summer so we have a lot of uncertainties ahead of us not only kovat 19 related but referendum related we have old school buildings been around for multiple decades and change orders come up and we can't predict at this time the extent and the dollar amount of change orders that were going to be experienced and so in there also cost overruns making a

106decision on a $530,000 combined bathroom concession stand and storage unit at this time may look very different and a year from now if our change orders commend higher than expected or we have cost overruns and so forth and if we have to replenish capital reserves under fund balance and have less money available for Cobra 19 spending the other issue is the vote is approved twenty six point nine million they didn't approve thirty million they didn't approve thirty point five million they didn't approve thirty-one million so I have a really hard time going over the twenty six point nine million without voter approval and if it's a safety issue a security issue and bathrooms would fall into the health and wellness category so I I do support the bathrooms I know the neighbors do too but

107going over the twenty six point nine four concession and storage and storage particularly we could get at Home Depot would be deeply concerning to me so I would approach it either one of two ways either finding a way to do bathrooms now because I agree they're important and then we discussed for the two or three is the right is the right number or postponing the project until we get a better idea of a cope in nineteen related costs and have a referendum costs and change orders and I think that with all the uncertainty that we have both with koban 19 and also with the referendum to spend five hundred thirty thousand when there may be higher priority items Steve talked about technology Daphna talked about the the need for this wing at the covering over

108at JW and so we have a whole host of priorities and to you know spend five hundred thirty thousand dollars now with all the uncertainty and then run the risk of having to replenish capital reserves from fund balance to me doesn't seem like the most responsible thing to do so that's my perspective Matt do you have any perspectives from the business administrators chair sorry I was just answering an attendee perspectives I mean that's a yes well just from the financial standpoint I guess one of the concerns is the level of the capital reserve and the uses that we have our perspective uses that we have for it that might be can some people's judgment more important than using it to we're going to have to use some of it if we want to complete the

109HVAC at JP and we would need to use more of it if we want to do that and do the restroom storage and concession facility so I'm just curious if you ever thought about what would be not five hundred and thirty thousand dollars so but about four hundred and sixty-five thousand dollar swing since we all agreed at the Facilities Committee if we didn't do this we needed to spend sixty five thousand dollars to install the ice machine the bottle filling stations and to remedy some great issues that are preventing proper drainage and creating mosquito infestations and other challenges yes so that yes we did come up with that $65,000 quote capital reserve is specifically reserved for capital projects so it's severely limited this state does not allow you to take money out for any reason

110currently there is a bill out there in the assembly in the Senate all possibly but we you know to allow for specifically for coal good relief but that's still in committee it may never come out of a committee but I know from experience in another school district being in the state office in Trenton in the with the do we the state assembly leader a district was running out of money and they would not allow them to take it out for any operating purpose it's not statutorily allowed so it is limited in scope I think it's a you know a board decision how to allocate that I think it's reasonable we have just over 2.3 million in there right now if you include that in the overall fund balance it's a little over eight point three

111million so to debate you know 500 well really what would be okay so financially it's a net four sixty five five thirty less sixty five but to take five thirty out of eight million plus you know reasonable fiscally responsible I mean ultimately capital reserve gets funded from fund balance right and even it's funded or replenished however you want to call it fund balance is unlimited in terms of being able to spend an operating budget and the kovat related expenses so we have much more flexibility with fund balance correct is one of the reasons you heard me say I think in finance a few times that you don't want to put too much into capital reserve because it does limit like I just said you can only they use it for capital purposes so if something

112came up you know as Finance has got tighter you know you're locked in there that money gets stuck in that capital bucket I think I just make one note I just thought of one more thing to I mean I think that you know clearly going forward I mean optimally as much as we can you know we want to get our percentage back from this state on capital projects you know as we did on the fourth plenum go ahead Brian it's just a question for Dave and Steve it was mentioned that a Home Depot shed might be an acceptable alternative in terms of storage and my understanding from Brian Dubinsky is the primary use of the storage is the football equipment that is used and one of the concerns is that there there isn't a place

113to store it now where it's conditioned and secured from you know insects and rodents and I thought that this was very important for the many families and many of them who are have children who are exactly the children we want to be out in our athletic classrooms they this was important that there be proper you know storage for that stuff am I remembering that correctly yes that's correct and you know also that storage would be somewhat shared with the concession area and it's all located in a central location but yeah the matting and the materials that or equipment that he's storing are definitely prone to rodent infestations and it just destroys the stuff so now this would be a pretty tight and secured space and also if I if I could just comment a little

114bit on you know just doing the bathrooms the bathrooms are the most expensive part of this structure getting water electric and sanitary to one toilet if you put one toilet out there it would be two hundred and some one thousand dollars so it's it's uh you know it's it's the biggest part of the structure obviously storage space is an empty room empty space so you're building the walls and the ceiling anyway the roof in the concession area is really just a hollowed area with a counter and a roll down door and electric enough to compensate for a popcorn machine or something small like that but just getting the utilities to that location is really a big bite at yeah twenty other report members have questions or comments have a few final thoughts I just like

115to say that the only concern I have is the one expressed by Daphna I mean when we talk about this facility either it's gonna be built the way it's built we've got a good price we know we've we've spent I don't know how many meetings eight eight meetings talking about this facility I think I know more about bathrooms and storage sheds than I ever and we've talked about every possibility of downsizing and changing and asked them to go back and research and we know all about jobs guys storage shed from Home Depot and the other ones and I feel pretty comfortable it is what it is the question for me is whether we as a as a district and a community can get our kind of act together in time to solve the JW issues

116and whether we need trailers there as Daphna mentioned and so I don't have a crystal ball and I don't know exactly where we're gonna be in two and three eight years with JW but I am I am aware of where we are now with this facility which i think is a basic amenity that we need at those fields for health and one of our students and I just think we need to get this done and and the taxpayers voted to do this project and we have already taken away I don't know what 200 some thousand worth of projects on the athletic fields that we've taken out because we don't have the funds in the referendum so I feel that this is a really important for learning and for health and firm kids out on that

117field and in kovat times to have running water in real bathrooms I think it's just very important so that's where I'm coming down although I do share daftness concerned about the trailers I'm having to balance that in my mind and I've been thinking a lot about it but I'm in favor of going forward with this project so I guess I would just add you know in though they hired to respect why everybody is struggling a little bit here and if we were have had good estimates for all of the referendum projects and we're running on or ahead of budget I think this would be an easier decision but for me one of the the deciding factors the as me strongly supporting this is the notion that I feel I and we need to keep faith

118we need to keep faith with our student-athletes then I want to particularly highlight our young women for whom the existing situation is not workable at all and I want to keep faith with our coaches I want to keep faith with the parents for whom the athletic components of the referendum was a major reason that they they lent their support I want to keep faith with our boosters and the boosters have told us they need a concession a small concession space and we have a meeting where the great Bob James has spoken perhaps Princeton's greatest booster I would really like to deliver for the boosters who have only one goal which is to provide the maximum amount of financial support to our athletic programs as possible and I'd like to give them the tool that they've

119requested for decades to be able to do that I also want to keep faith with our neighbors which have been mentioned and also with our administrators we in in in two of our meetings we spent a lot of time with Jessica Baxter the principal of the high school and Brian Dubinsky and they are in the unfortunate position of where the high school project just happens to be going last in order if they've gone first we would have not heavily value engineered the work at the high school we would have been doing that at JW or he would have been cutting back on the number of rooms with air conditioning at the elementary schools but because they come last in the sequence we said we asked them we toured the facility with them we asked them

120will you please work with us and help us identify ways to reduce the cost and they did that and they gave up about four hundred thousand dollars of other athletic priorities that were in the referendum and you know I thought we made a commitment to them too through with this project which I think they feel they they gave up other things in order to get this and I personally just don't feel I can go back on what I believe was a commitment we made to them knowing that we're going to have to go into capital reserve knowing that the financial part of the referendum is is not working exactly the way that we want to but we are using already tax monies that are specifically there for capital purposes to fulfill one of the central

121components that you know made it into the most urgent you know twenty six point nine million dollars of what had originally been a far higher number so I feel that in order for me to keep faith with all of all of those constituencies I I really I'm compelled to vote for it and I deeply respect Steve's judgement here in his last meeting I want to want to I want to I want to support his recommendation you well can i chime in I'm sorry I'm know stuff to see me I'm not at home so I'm sitting outside in Rhode Island but I've given this a lot of thought maybe more thought than any other referendum project that we've had and and some of the other issues that have come up and I've gone back and forth

122on its surface five hundred and thirty thousand dollars for a 900 foot shell with some toilets seems crazy but the reality of it is is that it's not crazy because we've tried to figure out how we could do this more economically and that's not doable as Dave mentioned you want to put one toilet out there just running the lines the electrical it's a necessity and I come back to and quite honestly until yesterday and maybe even earlier today I don't know that I had made up my mind about this but the reality of it is is that we have to have a toilet out at a field I mean it's really having gone to many many sporting events in my life and with my children it is a necessity for the spectators for the players

123for the coaches for everyone to have a secure safe facility there and so I see it as a as a necessity from Dan as Dan said it is a need the other parts right there ancillary but they also I don't think are the cost that is driving the bus here and I think it's important that we look at it from an overall perspective if we did delay this the cost is only going to go up construction costs never get cheaper and I think one of the things that we have to have learned from the situation that we're in having gone to for a referendum of almost 27 million dollars which I think we all acknowledge does not cover all of the things we need for our facilities by any stretch of the imagination is that

124the one of the problems that we've had over time is pushing things down the road and they just get the problems get bigger and bigger and bigger and this is one that is just it's Amy we have to have it so it's gonna be done eventually some board whether it's us or in the future is going to decide to do it and we are at a point where it's doable we have the plans for it we have it as economically doable as possible even if as I have said it's expensive for what it is but that is what it is and we have to have it waiting any longer I don't think is going to do our kids or our community any good and while we have all these other things going on I think

125we're always going to have other things going on we're always going to be pitting one thing against another and to me it's it's a something that I feel compelled even with with some reservation that compelled to go along with and to vote for Susan I guess I want to speak not as a athletes family but just as a former parent of students that go there I think the thing that hit me most when we were doing the tour with Brian and Jessica was incidents of swatting when we have eight you know we have 1,800 people on that field for potentially three four hours while a school was being checked to see if it was safe to go back in I also so that hit me to not have adequate permanent bathrooms available for both the

126students and the staff to use at a time of both stress and just you know say you know and now and then the second thing that has obviously affected us all was how I feel about Cleveland and the safety of our students and staff and to have a real bathroom that could be made Co bit safe when Kovac goes away flew safe whatever it is with real hand-washing real abilities build to keep it clean the fact that the athletes will actually use it and not go back and use the you know under the bleachers or whatever is happening that girls and adult teachers have a place to use to go to a real bathroom when I have their period and they're outside and the fact in a co-ed world as I've been advocating to use

127the outside as much as possible because it's safe having an outside real bathroom to me is an important priority I agree with what Beth said about deafness points I think both our points are highly well taken which is it shouldn't eliminate something else we feel that's important and that we should also try to complete and it shouldn't and that we must keep an eye on how JW is going to be able to function as a school as it continues to grow but I don't think those two issues should make this project which initially was created both for health and for security to not have outside people go into our buildings when there they are and need to go to the bathroom I just think kicking the can down the road is is you know the

128building's ninety years old we've not been the bathroom so I think it's time that we make this commitment and that the community expressed when they voted that they wanted anyone else want to speak otherwise I did we want to open it up for public comment on this point my fake background takes my hand away and and I think what I I agree with what what everyone said I think that for me I voted against every iteration of this referendum except for this one and that was because everything in there I thought was essential and and the the challenges of construction and bids and all that stuff is that you can predict or estimate as much as you want you at the end of the day things are never going to turn out the way you

129you think they they're going to and as a parent of a female and former female athlete and a parent of a high schooler and the one who's going to be going there we would not tolerate any other learning environment where bathroom and sanitary facilities were a five minute walk away or a three minute walk away they're there that would be absolutely unacceptable and people would be up in arms and I think that and I think that that is with good reason and it's reasonable and that's why you know I I support this I think it's too much money too um but I also don't have any answer or other alternative to doing it any less expensively and I'm concerned about about jw2 I've got get caught in gridlock every parent-teacher night I don't I don't

130know how we're gonna get kids from point A to point B I don't know where we're gonna educate them that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do this now it means that we're gonna have to work harder to figure out that problem as we go forward anyone else okay Matt do we want to open for public comment on this yes so we have had a lot of people raising their hands on an awful but I call them in order as I've seen people raising their hands for the last hour Bob James is up first Bob let me add my a muted out against near yes okay I'm sorry about that let me repeat myself Brian thank you for the shout out before I voted for the twenty six point nine million dollar budget and the upgrade

131of the athletic fields and this project were a big part of the reason why I did and as he said to to have the administration at Princeton High School submit to the fact that we're in the budget crunch and kind of cutback in some of the athletic enhancements that were part of that budget but yet include this very very necessitous essence every part of the of the athletic picture I think is very important this is this is without question and necessity those porta-johns just don't do it it is something that is going to get more expensive if we kick the can down the road as was said and I am total support of it and I hope that everybody else joins me in that support as well I I can't tell you how much I

132feel this is an important issue I agree with Michelle and this is without question something that needs to go forward and approved so that's my support behind it and I thank you for the opportunity Thank You Kip cherry who's next Lenny damn you you're good here you okay so when we're talking about breaking faith and I think we're breaking faith already in terms of the fact that the public voted for a referendum of twenty six point nine million dollars we are currently over budget so that is a major problem right up front if you talk about Ricky faith no one is talking about not having any bathrooms nobody loves porta-potties but I think sometimes one needs to postpone until one knows where one is for we don't know about change orders we don't know about

133cost overruns on the high school and we don't know how much the Kovan investment is going to cost us and Steve was talking about some big numbers there we really don't know where we are with that and safety is absolutely paramount and so we're gonna have to spend quite a bit of money on the Cova tissue alone so I think in a way you're sort of closing your eyes and hoping that everything will work out and things don't always work out that well that way as far as you know spending a lot of money five hundred thirty thousand dollars no matter how you cut it is a lot of money and we already know that it doesn't have to be masonry you can get a very strong wood frame building that lasts for several hundred

134years all the buildings have been moved in Princeton over 100 buildings have all been wood frame so that's baloney if you ask the Boosters do they really need this of course they do that's with your boosters so you know you're just talking to yourself by asking that question and of course they're they need it and they need it right now they could have a concession stand just by putting a pop-up tent and putting in a table nothing's nobody's protected preventing them from having some kind of concession or they could invite a hot dog guy to come in and sell hot dogs free of charge I've had hot dog people come out to the battlefield hasn't crossed a red cent they come out they sell hot dogs they make their money they go away they get

135their permit they have their health review certification they do it all so I think that you really need to think deeper about where we are and where we are is we're in a pandemic and there gonna be a lot of costs maybe out of a different pocket operating costs that we don't know about you don't know about state aid we don't know about collections do you know that our downtown is facing tremendous trauma we know that a hundred million debt instruments went unpaid in the last month 100 million dollar mortgages 100 million mortgages and all other kinds of instruments were not paid by their their mortgages because they had no money it's gonna get worse and the fellow money's gonna run out and so coming into the summer we're gonna be in a much worse

136place and we also don't know where we're going to go with the kovat thing but we know that things are not looking really good right now that there are a lot of hot spots around the United States so I think that you should aim to be on the conservative side and I don't think that anybody could criticize you for that and I think they could criticize you for being a little flamboyant right now at a time in which money is extremely tight and you're already over budget so just keep that in mind that you're already in arrears and you know going into the reserves is problematic that's what reserves are there for the worse worst case and here you are talking about going to the reserves for a bathroom setup for five hundred and thirty

137thousand dollars I played lacrosse I played hockey I'm a woman I got hot and I would have loved to have had this facility then and at Princeton High School where I graduated and I would love to see it now and I think we need it but I think we should postpone moving forward with it until we know better where we are financially thank you thank you John John Durban hold on I have to unmute you John yep can you hear me this weekend all right thanks Matt hi everybody so I will just say up front that I think it's both a necessity and it's the right thing to do to build the the combo bathroom concession stand storage facility and I will I actually just want to take a bigger step back for any for

138anybody out there and the public who hasn't heard me talk about these issues and why why youth let exhorting these town and in the town of Princeton but I think for a school district to really legitimately be excellent it has to be able to to say with a straight face that it's excellent academics that it's excellent in meeting the special needs that our kids have that's excellent and equity that it's excellent in the arts and it's excellent in athletics and in my humble opinion I think our school district can with confidence check the academics in the arts box now and I say that at the same time why wanting to applaud this board in the previous board because I think I think the last couple boards have really started to zero in on the other

139three areas where we need to do serious work and make serious improvements and strides are being taken so I applaud all of you for that and for those of you that are out there that might be wondering like well why you know why why is athletics become so implies youth athletics becomes so important this town it never seemed to be that way when we were growing up and I think for those of you that are one asking yourself that question the big the big thing that's changed in the last 20 years is that youth athletics has exploded both across the country but in the town of Princeton and we now see thousands of children in this community playing not only recreation sports but playing travel sports and club sports and it has become a big

140component of what this town does throughout the week and on the weekends and that's a big that's a big sea change for this community and when when Steve Cochran likes and everybody besides been talking about the joy that we all want the kids to have to feel I can tell you that the kids that are in the arts in this in this community and in the school district they have joy with all with with how tremendous the arts are in the school district out in the community the athletes come up through the youth sports programs on the town side and I think they have genuinely tremendous experiences then they show up at PBS especially a JW and PHS and yes they smile with their friends they smile with their coaches but the facilities are just

141not up to snuff compared to what even the town has and they are definitely not up to snuff in terms of what the high schools around the county have so and there's someone who's traveled around and looked at all the ball fields all the playing fields I can tell you that we are woefully behind especially on the outdoor natural grass playing fields we are woefully behind on the indoor facilities in terms of the the strength and conditioning facilities and we are 50 years behind the times not having this bathroom concession stand building so and I think our our student-athletes should have you know they should be able to smile too they should be able to have a great experience with their friends that they play with with the teachers that Coach them and they should

142be able to feel and go that they feel like they're going out playing on really safe playing fields that are up to up to speed with what they have expected growing up on the and on the recreation side here in town and around the county so I think those are all really important reasons why we need to deliver not only on this project but on the other pieces that were promised in referendum for athletics and again you know to use best kind of metaphor yes the the battleship is is turning and you can see it turning for meeting the meet the the meet the special needs at all our kids have you can see it you can feel it turning on equity and justice issues which is awesome as you know the Durin's are all

143in support of that but athletics still is at the back of that battleship and this is this is the beginning of feeling that battleship starting to turn now but in order for it to turn we've got to see the board deliver on its commitments to remodel and expand the endorse you know weight room and strengthen training facilities we need to have this building built and we need to have the natural grass playing fields brought up to speed so that they are safe instead of sending our kids out playing on unsafe playing fields so that's my that's my speech and I want to close though by with a special shout out to those Annie and Steve and definitely thank you on behalf of the Durbin family for all the great work that the two of you

144have done - it's been great watching our boys go through a little Brook and and Steve has been great working with you on various initiatives the last several years - I wish you all the best - but I really hope that we're gonna get to at least 6 votes in favor of voting on the concession stand bathroom storage facility bill ignite thank you thank you mom gene turbine is next hi thanks I'll be brief I just wanted to thank you all for working on behalf of our schools I really appreciate it it's a labor of love I'm asking you to please build a concession stand with the restrooms and the storage build it well build it right give our kids an outdoor space because an outdoor space with a concession stand and storage and bathrooms

145can be imagined and reimagined by our kids and our boosters for fund raisers and pure fun you really shouldn't shortchange proper storage because you'll just you're just gonna have to replace it in 8 to 10 years we need the ventilation and proper storage attached to the building a concession is important and this structure is something that every other school in the state of New Jersey and probably Pennsylvania already has John made that point already we think it's a co-ed friendly project because it permits bigger you know more expanded use of the outdoor space and so thanks for considering it thank you David serxner we can hear you okay good enough so for those of you that don't know me I've been a resident for 16 years my wife has been an educator in the town

146of Princeton for over 20 years we have four children two have graduated and our current college athletes two more one is going to be a sophomore next year one is going to be a freshman they're both athletes as well and I've been to a lot of board meetings nothing has motivated me ever to speak like this issue there have been some pretty intense meetings I've been a part of this is this is needed if you've ever been to a game at Princeton High School and watch the parade of children walk off at the coaches to go behind the stands to relieve themselves you'll you know immediately that this can't stand like mr. Durbin I think in the last 15 years I've been just about every high school in New Jersey at least it feels that

147way I would rank our bathroom facility as among the worst that I've seen it's really not acceptable with a daughter about to enter who will be on several teams as well I can't imagine what she'll do at halftime of our games so again I support this initiative I support it you know very strongly I voted positively for the referendum for this singular issue believe it or not it's a big shortcoming and I do believe that the Athletics as a part of the Prince of education are just as important there's anything else and I don't think as I think Steve said we would stand for this in any other part of the educational system we shouldn't stand for it here it was promised to the voters it's time to just do it but one last point

148about the procurement of these things I understand it you guys are going with the lowest bidder and that's fine I'm not here to question how much it cost because I assume you've done your homework and don't worry about how much it costs now I worry about how much it costs later we were we were here when the track wasn't done as it was supposed to be with the valley Road filled the bottle please do the procurement correctly and make sure you protect against overruns and you understand what you're actually buying I'm not debating to do what I ever said as I said I've agreed to it I just can't to take that it might not be done or there could be overruns and now we're not talking about five hundred thirty thousand but who knows

149what so we can just please be careful and really pay attention and hold the contractors liable for whatever it is we wind up buying so that's it for me and finally and Steve thank you very much for your service to the town I've enjoyed getting to know you and I wish you luck in your retirement and future endeavors thank you thank you David worry we're okay sorry I guess I just want to reiterate a lot of these points I don't want to take a long time but a bathroom it's just such a necessity it's almost embarrassing that we're having this conversation it was approved as part of the referendum voters voted for it it's vital for hygiene and to the point about which you know which which goals it supports it's not just hygiene and

150wellness it is security and it is equity it's gender equity girls and boys have very different bathroom needs I shouldn't need to elaborate and it's definitely a big issue for for girls I mean it's an issue for security and it's for not only you know girls female students also female staff visitors others and the turf is in use or should be in use all year round so there are a lot of people who you know wind up needing a bathroom for obvious reasons I think it's a shame that the other items in the referendum that came first happened to go over but I don't think that we should sort of conflate these issues in a way and that's what the capital reservist for I'll just keep it at that and say thank you for all

151your hard work I know that the board is a volunteer group and that you work extremely hard so thank you for that thank you those are all the questions from the public okay the glasses hang on a second okay without my glasses so are we going to move forward then we're on to the resolution so the resolution is to amend the original award of contract to include the allowance the alternate for the bathroom mat is that correct yes amends the bid that was award on a May 26th for the alternate we just been discussing for $530,000 yes glasses um so do it can I have a motion please Bryan second Michelle thank you any discussion any further discussion it's not plan that we've already bought at the high school bid and all those alternates except

152for the bathroom and so whatever vote comes up tonight does not affect that man right we're all avoiding on the bathroom to add that to the they happen to be the same contractor correct it actually says to read it dan I put my glasses on now sorry I didn't have my glasses it says the amendment is to include alternate one that's the specific amendment and alternate bid five will still be paid out of food service so it doesn't affect the previous approval thank you so then I'd like to call the question yeah birth parent yes Branko yes dander you know yes to each yes that's exactly yes I McDonald yes she'll talk ponder yes your cats yes that's the candle now Susan cancer yes all motion passes thank you next item is the board committee

153reports each one highlights I just note it is ten o'clock so if if you could be brief or if you choose to submit it by in writing that would be fine so the first is equity Michelle you're a mute I'm happy to submit it in fighting thank you and then if you we are submitting am writing math that means they will be able to be found where on the board docks to this meeting or to the minutes they go into the minutes the minutes of this meeting which will then be attached to the next meeting which is next week so the public will have to wait a week if you want to find them but we will have them okay the next one is facilities Susan and Brian I could submit him writing although I

154will just give a brief summary that the work we were told the work has been moving ahead steadily on the referendum projects awarded at JW CP little Brook and Community Park so because of the school closing they were able to get a jump on that so that's been moving along smoothly as of that thank you next is finance Brian I'll to say a few quick things and we've met twice since the last board meeting we got a briefing and a new phone system that conforms with Alyssa's law there will be largely paid for out of security grant funding Matt updated us on the negotiations with Rick bus settlement for the amount of time that our students were not using the buses we had what is now at every meeting discussion on contingency financial planning and

155then our most recent reading our most recent meeting we enjoyed a significant presentation from our technology team on the possibility of moving to a one-to-one model with respect to laptops and iPads and I understand that's going to be the subject of significant additional discussion tomorrow at student achievement along with the learning platform and a future board meeting thank you personnel Debbie hi the Personnel Committee met on June 5th the committee has been reviewing and discussing stipends in more detail Matt and Dave joined the committee to discuss facility stipends I wanted to share information on several new hires for the 2020 2021 school year that Mike and our principals and supervisors have recently hired that focus on PBS vision of a more diverse staff a male african-american elementary classroom teachers been hired a bilingual high school

156counselors been hired they've also we've also hired for Hispanic teachers one is a first-generation American and two are immigrants one from Colombia and Uruguay and we will meet in September that's it thank you policy just you haven't met since the last meeting okay thank you student achievement Betsy thank you I'll be very brief we met on June 5th which seems like a long time ago now we always have a remote learning update and he updated us on how the district is planning for the restart there's still quite a few questions and very few answers as Steve alluded to earlier in the in the meeting but people are working very very hard it is focused on the physical emotional and academic health of our students and staff Pat Lanahan also joined us he is the supervisor

157for the visual and performing arts and he shared that visual and performing arts will continue this fall and staff is just revising their plans for instruction according to social distancing guidelines we will we do meet tomorrow as Brian noted at noon so for members of the public we'd like to join us we'll hear our remote learning update tomorrow will be about summer school so Annie updated us on school trips that are happening the short story is in the fall there are no school trips being planned at the elementary level they're hopeful that one trip per grade will be scheduled sometime between January and June from the common field trip list if it's safe to do so @ JW that includes the DC trip is not being planned for this fall for our eighth graders it

158is certainly something our eighth graders look forward to so we spoke at student achievement about the that taking place either later in their eighth grade year or perhaps even in the fall of their ninth grade year as this is such an important trip for our students the sixth grade fall trip has been postponed to them to May and no seventh grade trip has yet been scheduled and finally the Princeton High School international trips to France and Italy that were board approved for the fall have been canceled the fall trip to Japan may be postponed to later in the school year but it will not take place in the fall and a decision regarding the choir trip to Morocco in February of 2021 has not yet been made district administrators will continue to update the board

159on any changes and two trips or any other plans finally Andy shared briefly that supervisors will send out academic resources for families over the summer and we will talk more about that as well tomorrow so again the meeting is on zoom' tomorrow at noon open to the public and look on the calendar for the link and the Xoom link thank you nice question what about the eighth grade DC trip that's plant that occurs in the fall is there a need to update on that the only update so far is that it's not happening this fall but that I don't believe Annie I don't know if there's any other information I haven't heard of a date yet no date but they're looking at the spring okay thanks and as I said we did sort of brainstorm

160perhaps if it can't happen during their eighth grade year maybe something creative could happen for them in their ninth grade year you might want to think about on the district website when we talk about restart quoting someplace for the field trip so I think a lot of families really want and have these questions about what's happening and maybe there's a place they can look might be helpful that's a great suggestion for school leaders to add that thank you any other questions on committee reports if not that it brings us a public forum at where we welcome the public to comment on any item agenda or non and three minutes state your name and address and put your hand up in the box and and Matt will call on you Alex Cross Alex it's actually Theresa

161croc using my computer so there we go but I'm Theresa cross I'm a educator in the district I've been in the district for 23 years I don't know if you can see me or not but I'm actually I'm a middle-aged Caucasian woman who was born in Trenton where I lived in a row home on baby Street with my parents and my five siblings until I was about 3 and then we could and that's where it frontward from now in my years here in Princeton as here I've seen many things change but I've seen many things stay the same and to be the most delayering is with regard to race and racial bias now I know Princeton has made great strides in bringing in guest speakers authors professional development specialists we've done a lot of talking

162folk talking things like that I haven't experienced any real major changes that not only support our minority and disenfranchised students but also raise them up now maybe we don't think there's a problem in Princeton I actually didn't see the problem in myself until recently because I thought well you know I've struggled I've worked hard and then something occurred to me I was thinking when I was 12 years old I got my very first job because I needed to and I got it my very first job because somebody was willing to hire me in a snack bar in a tennis for a tennis complex and I wonder if back in 1978 if I would have gotten that same job if I was a little twelve-year-old brown-skinned girl my guess is probably not and then it made

163me think even more all of the opportunities and things that like my eyes got opened and I thought whoa hold on I worked hard and I've struggled but I've had opportunities that I may not have had and I really started to understand white privilege I would oh my gosh like I felt guilty that I not saying this till I'm 54 years old but I'm seeing it so I can't undo the past I can't change my history I can't change my ethnicities but I'm speaking because I feel the need to do something other than talk and I just think gosh we're about changes here in Princeton we're about big chain we're not afraid of big changes right we've made we've changed our school day but that's a big change that was a monumental change it took

164a lot of time we've changed CP and those of you to talk to me know exactly how I feel about the changes at CP we put in a whole deal ID program there I am still scratching my head about why that program is there but I don't know i I'd love to see some day somewhere the statistics that support the need for that program because I know we probably have statistics that support the need for us supporting our minority and you know like underprivileged students I mean Daphne was talking earlier to about how some of those statistics in our disciplinary days we make major overhauls and now I'm cynically where's the major overhaul for our minority students like big major things we where's the creative problem solving where's the overhaul of the resources that we're

165using the teaching materials the classroom libraries that you know as I've gone through mine I'm like I've always had a very diverse library yeah yeah but I need to even do better and I need to do more I'm ready like a rip through Teachers College and look at all the mentor Tech's and wondering how diverse are they like are we doing a good enough job like we're a district that is displacing families from one particular school like if your community Park and you don't want DLI then you have to go to another school I've scratched my head about that and why that happens and we provide transportation for that but so I don't know I think if we're willing to make drastic changes then and we're willing to invest on all of these other things

166where are those big changes and if we don't think that there's a problem in Princeton like I went through fifty four years not thinking that was a problem and I don't think there's a problem with me I don't think like meeting while I eat her Caucasian is a problem me not really fully understanding my white privilege that was the problem when my Hut my son heard me talking goes Wow mom you get it like he grew up understanding white privilege but he didn't get that from me he got that from himself and he thought it was kind of cool that I'm getting it so my thought is as we're talking about budgets as we're talking about bathrooms and athletes and all of the needs we really need to think about the needs of online Rd

167kids and what we can do other than book talks speaking with you know this committee in that committee and all the other things that fizzle out because quite honestly people are stopping showing up for those because it just doesn't go anywhere okay so I've used up enough of your time and I have loads of ideas I always do so I don't just talk and not follow it up thank you for your time and I hope that we can make an investment in in our kids and and what they need because I think there's a lot more that we need to be doing Thanks thank you I do not see an questions are there any other public comments out there not questions comments we have none okay then we will continue with personnel items and I

168will go through these rather quickly so the public knows that the board has had some explanation on these and has asked questions but if anyone wants to interrupt me please do and ask a question but I think most our consent items so first is appointments resignations retirements transfer reassignments yeah I thought I'm sorry Matt I'm really sorry I assumed that Angela was gonna be a separate vote I'm sorry where's Matt there is um on this one and I wanted to vote separately on her for some reason I just assumed it would be separate so I'm kind of screwing this up here so I would I would love to have that as an action I'm sorry so we actually do a quick action on on the Angela item hey can I speak to that sure yes

169this is where it goes go ahead all right so this is is bad putting that up there so as I as one of my final acts as superintendent may be the very last official act I have this is my final hours of my minutes my board meeting I get the honor of recommending the acting principal at at Johnson Park Elementary School this is not an easy task to recommend the person to follow dr. Bob Ginsberg in that capacity but I am incredibly excited to be recommending tonight to the board that we appoint Angela seaso stents in the role of acting principal for Johnson Park Elementary School and Angela is I'm just a remarkable person those of you who who know her and I know she's led restorative circles for this board but those of you

170who know her recognize her as someone who just who lights up a room who makes people cared for who makes people listened to and she has been a member of our community our PBS family for the past 20 years she began as a teacher of special education she understands our students with learning differences she taught special education in both mathematics and in Spanish she spent nearly a decade as our K through 12 director of guidance and and working with the social-emotional welfare of our of our students and our staff and most recently she has been supporting students and families as an assistant principal at Princeton High School she is our district expert in restorative justice has done that training and has led workshops for us and she is currently researching now the the power of

171restorative practice at writer University as part of her study for a doctoral program angela has as vision experienced energy a true heart for kids and a deep deep commitment to issues of equity I just I can't think of someone from our staff who I could recommend more highly for this role I'm I know that she will cherish the opportunity to be a part of the Jaypee community that she will give her heart and soul to the students and the families and the staff who are there and we'll begin that right away so I give her my my most enthusiastic recommendation for this role and hope the board will appoint her tonight thank you Steve could I have a motion for this amendment for this item Brian a second let's see again this is a resolution

172to appoint Angela according to this transfer me assignment provision so and further discussion Daphna your your mute were there any candidates have color that applied for this position we had nine candidates internal candidates apply for workers of color Michelle um you know it this is this is not easy for me because once again I don't have a any problem at all especially with this candidate with the individual but again and and that's so interesting that that miss cross talked about how do we change things my issue is again with process this board is asked repeatedly to approve all kinds of decisions financial decisions tenure decisions personnel decisions just kind of across the board that impact our children for many years to come and I for me when there is a lack of transparency it shakes

173my confidence in the process and I understand that this this particular position it was short term there had to be a decision made quickly but several weeks ago I voted against two assistant principals at JW middle school because I was concerned about the process and when the process does not transparent as Daphna just asked we had four candidates of color we don't win we don't know what the criteria is for the decision what the basis is for the decision it it makes me concerned because this is a board that's going to be hiring a superintendent it's going to be hiring an assistant superintendent and it's going to be hiring a permanent principal at Johnson Park and if we keep having these important critical hires for people to lead our school district for decades to come

174and the process is not transparent or we have concerns about the process or were led to believe that somehow our impact input is going to have on some sort of effect and we find out that it doesn't or we rubber stamp appointments then words we're complicit in potentially engaging in behavior that blocks people of color from getting full consideration for these positions and and I will continue to push against a process that is not transparent and that is not and that we have not clearly articulated what our priorities are as a school district and given direction to whoever the person is hiring as to what we would like to see what characteristics and qualities we would like to see in the person appointed to that position I have no problem whatsoever with angela cecil students

175and i and i want to make sure that that that's not the issue the issue is we can't continue to do business especially in the personnel realm we can't continue to do business in this way because when we continue to do business in its way we spend more on personnel than anything other than oh not even those anything that we do and we still year after year decade after decade i'm tired of hearing myself talk about how we don't effectuate any change when we look at our statistics when we look at achievement for black kids there is a movement happening in this country right now and we're still tone-deaf so having said that until we get a process that is transparent that we've been able to articulate what arch priorities are as a board and

176what we'd like to see in our school district and what kind of outcomes we want to see for all our kids i cannot support these kinds of decisions miss della let me just respond I am as the superintendent recommending who will I believe to be the very best candidate for this position she is someone who identifies as Hispanic and is a person of color she understands Spanish and she brings to the position I think the qualities and the heart of a great Elementary Principal my issue was not with the candidate my issues with the process I can't say it any more clearly than I've already articulated it you've heard me say it before and I'm gonna say it again I just like to add that you know I've been complicit as well and this is

177very difficult decision for me this has nothing to do with the candidate it has to do that we talk and talk and talk about equity we don't know what the standards were which made a candidate acceptable for this job and you know it's very hard to be up here with a superintendent that I respect and a candidate that I have the highest regard for and be put in a situation where I have to you know not support your recommendation but you know just I can't say any better than Michelle said it but if we don't start to change things it's not going to get better and my heart really breaks for those candidates of color who tried out a black skin who tried out for the position and you know we don't want to lose

178those staff members and I just feel if we keep going business as usual we're going to lose some really great staff members so again it's a very difficult decision and yeah thanks any other discussion ok we call the question Matt do you want to do role yes no standart no just toys you mean chest you're muted I'd see bag wheel yes Brian McDonald yes Michelle talk ponder no Peter Katz abstain you forgot me incision Susan and Daphna I'm still going down the roll call right after the candle No Susan cancer yes though five-to-four motion passes thank you so we will congratulations to it we will continue your on we are on personal items 5 j 5 personal items consent j 6 curriculum instruction j 7 student services comment and i'm going to leave it in

179the consent items but the student services appointments for out of district placement you know I am asked some questions on didn't didn't receive any is and it's not this one okay thank you eight athletes nine stipends ten leave of absence eleven termination twelve central administrators contracts thirteen resolution to create new position so I have a question about the CSA contracts it looks like there's no increase in that is that correct yes that's correct so I guess we have to have these contracts in place by July first but so I guess we'll amend them to account for any salary increase yes yes yes okay thirteen resolution to create a new position fourteen press a sidebar then we have K one a grant application acceptance fiscal as essa l1 student services grant application acceptance fiscal twenty I

180di a l2 educational placement special needs and you had a comment there yeah but muted I think I reviewed 16 placements the highest for the tuition of $200,000 which would pay for about 10 kids and about 2 million dollars in total and this is an area where I just haven't seen board oversight we've operated by committee and I just don't you know see the the data or the information to to be able to make an informed decision now that being said I've been on many calls with student achievement with families of special education children and I know it's been a really really hard year and with koban 19 and remote learning and all the challenges so I don't want to add to any pressure by voting no so I'm going to vote yes but I

181just want to note that you know they were like 16 schools I understand in a total sum of these kids travel a long way and and I just think it's something that the board going forward has to pay more attention to because it's fun for the kids and it's important for the families and the course is important for the school district so I just want to note that although I do intend to vote yes thank you Dan I would share your your comment I think I think we did talk about this at a previous meeting and I think we're going to put it into the calendar for August or September of each year that we have a report on out of district placements and so we have a little bit more information on where the

182children are going and some of the obviously we can't have all the details but I agree with you that for this level of an expenditure would be helpful to have a bit more of transparency just in terms of where we where we're sending people thank you this was made at an action item bath we want to take a motion yeah before we do I'm an item because I'm gonna stain because I don't have enough information to approve this and you know like Dan I've been you know kind of pushing to make sure these are you know for me what it is is I want to make sure that our customer which is our parents and our students are getting what they need and so you know I kind of struggle with all this I'm also

183really hoping with our review of special education because I did speak to the consultant you know that this is an area that they can give us some advice on you know can look into it I'm not the specialist at all but I and I want to make sure that we as a school district are doing right by our students and family all right can I have a motion for this we have no other comments promotion Brian second second Simon Jess thank you we'll call the question breath Barron yes Branko Lib staining all right dan dart yes Jess to each Patsy bag yeah yes Ramadhan yes don't work ponder yes yeah Peter cats yes Daphne Kendall yes he's in cancer yes motion passes thank you that takes us to m1 we're still on consent items financial

184reports renewal of my club licensing renewal of single sign-in solution license renewal to JAMF power school student information system switch upgrades Dyna Tech renewal afford Annette firewall wireless upgrade acceptance of donation office furniture and here I'll give a thanks to Hans and Nicola Hanks for IKEA office furniture and HP printer scanner to be used at little Brook school thank you very much that brings us to the consent vote and can I have a motion please Peter second Brian I'll call the question that's Barrett yes yes one dart yes well storage Brian I'm sorry Patsy bag real yes Brian McDonald yes Michelle talk ponder yes the cats yes that's makandal yes is it Santa yes sentence render passes thank you that brings us to the final public comment on any topic again we keep to three

185minutes main an address please Matt do we have comments going once going twice no one has raised their hand okay thank you and that brings us to the final closing comments if there are none can I have a motion to adjourn oh definitely a second Brian all in favor yes motion passes meeting adjourned